[quote=siva;16719]Om Hubert, my friend,
In practical terms, everything is vibration, and vibration, having force and dimension, is physical.
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What is vibration ? It is a wave. It is movement. How do we expereince it ?
Why is it immediatly true that everything is vibration ? It might be acceptable for a physicist, but most people are not. What you say is just as hard to comprehend to the ordinary man as what I say, if not more.
Isn’t today’s physics greatest achievment the obliteration of the concept of matter ? I think this is what you say when you state everything is vibration. I say, this is is true, but only part of the truth.
Vibration always needs a cause. There is no vibration without a cause. What is the cause of all the various vibrations of the Universe ? What makes them vibe ?
While I appreciate your perspective, I don’t understand all its relevance. For all the good intentions and eloquence in this wisdom and knowledge, I feel it might overwhelm those who might be new to yoga and seeking to grasp the first step, i.e., what to do v.s. what to think or believe?
Yes, in this you are right. It is overwhelming. But it is so just because people are already overwhelmed by another kind of mental manipulation, that of materialist natural science. It might be too much and alienating to the beginner … but I trust people’s capacity of understanding, or if not, I trust people’s natural gift to argue, to question. I just want them to do that. To work for their ideas, not just accept them on a plate. This way, what they realize is their own, it becomes their life, and transforms their lives. They becaome the living guiding forces, and not a method, to what they need to stick to for the sake of some future realization. I am aware of how these things sound. I might be mistaken in details, or be lacking in my presentation, but it does not matter. What matter that it is shocking, and it awakes. I value any feedback greatly. For some, it is so alien, or silly, that they just ignore it. But those, who object, them I like. I am sure, that to anyone, who takes the time and effort to listen to what I say, they will make sense eventually. It does not need naivity, or faith, it is not beleiveing by the power of who said it, where I read it, how it fits into one’s existing world view. It just takes the willingness to think togheter, one thought at a time. I’d say, read Rudolf Steiner. But because I do not trust people to do that, I come here, and provoke them. Like the pain of the devil I am. 
The reason I ask if this realisation is something we can “experience” and “know,” is that for all these beautiful symbols, lovely mental images, gods and beings, feelings of the heart, etc., there is no acknowledgment of the physical phenomena, the siva/shakti union which occurs with this alignment of the chakras we speak of, and the union of static and dynamic force in one’s body. These ARE actual, “physical” and yet not “material.”
I think you are talking about the processes of the vital body. Chakras, nadis, are organs of pranomaya kosha. They are not physical. I use the world physical for anything available to our ordinary senses. Chakras, and vital processes are not so. In that, they are suprasensorial, thus, for me they are not physical, but etheral. (vital, pranic) But just because they are vital, they are processes of the Life Force, they are alive ! Not energies flowing in a machine like construction. They are governed by wisdom, and that wisdom is superior to human wisdom. The governing “law” can be thus seen as a very wise spiritual entity … in fact it is one. When I talk about spiritual entitieis, I am not talking winged angles in the form of a young lady, in a cape. All that belongs to the senses. These entities are also manifestation of Spirit, just as we, humans are. I think you would not argue that human beings exist ?
For example, gravity is not spiritual or a god-being, although I might represent it with a symbol of a unified heaven and earth. It is also not material. I can’t see or touch it although it’s obviously something physical i can feel.
Isn’t gravity the law of universal attraction ? Why can’t it be a spiritual entity ? The reason people are at diffculty to picture this is because they can’t imagine any other being except themselves. So when I say, gravity is indeed a spiritual entity, they think that can’t be. Because it does not present any of the traits we associate with beingness, like free will, desire, actions, life, movement. What if we picture gravity as a very obedient entity, what always willingly doeswhat it does ? Would not it be godlike patience and selfless service to perform that for the sake of the Universe, only a god is capable of ?
The greeks had Atlas, who held the sky on his shoulders. We think that is a silly picture. Even children are laughing at such a thing today. They must have been very narrow and undeducated people, we think, if they had such believes. And some of them indeed were like that. When they heard from the priest of the mistery temple, who actually knew, a truth such as that, they were only able to grasp it in it’s external aspect, the sensorial image of a very strong man who is helding the sky up. Thus legends of gods and mythical heros are left to us.
I say, nothing can exist and act (gravity is acting, isn’t it) without the will of the Supreme being, God, Brahman, the Nameless, etc. But God, Brahman, The Absolute, Allah, is not a tyrant. The world is not working by the mechanic laws set by God, as a clockwork once set in motion. This is again a remiscent thought of XIX century physiscs. We do not realize, but our world view today is still determined by the theories of the age of industrialization.
The world does not work, it lives. It lives by the life of the forces what all exists and it is governed by the divine power alive in them. This is why siddhis are possible at all. One attuned to the spirit, to God, to the nature, essence of things, can change what we call “laws” because through that person, God’s will is changing. Siddhis are proof that these ar not blind laws, what are somehow defated by the heroic will of the aspirant. Superman does not fly through his will, he flies through the divine will manifesting itself in his flight.
Or one might appreciate the notion of balance embodied in the trinity, etc. The phenomena of this union (yoga) unveils the reality in which these analogous metaphors and renderings cease to exist: a state from which these images are inspired in the heart and mind and not realised enroute.
These are not analogous methaphores and renderings as I tried to present above, but necessarily clumsy ways of presenting Reality through human language. If one is able to identify only their external aspect, than for such people, these are indeed fairytales. But if one manages to grasp their essence with an adult consciusness, if they come to life in one, The Child will be awakened once again. Didn’t Jesus say if ye do not become like children you do not enter the Kingdom of God ?
I am not saying we throw out everything we know, but to arrive to a deeper comprehension, and if something proves to be wrong, or innappropriate, then we throw it out without hesitation. There is the tendency of human mind for structure, to become content with that it has aquired. There is another tendency to break anything and do not accept any rules. The democrat and the liberal, the law abiding citizen and the rebel, the brown noser, and the badboy, they are all ruled by these forces. Tamas, and rajas. Ahriman and Lucifer, in antroposophy. Balance, in between, sattwa, Christ. Christ being crucified between the two thiefs is the perfect picture of this. (and not just)
The eastern aspirant might say, as you say, what use is to me to deal with christianity or antroposophy, when I have my wisdom about the trinity of the gunas ? Many, I say.
In a materialist age, the gunas are not comprehended as they were meant by the sages who tought them. They might be seen instead of ever present, acting, tempting/balancing powers, as theoretic constructs, abstract thoughts. Any advanced yoga practitioner knows these from his/her personal expereince, and how powerful they can be. These are not blind forces of the universe these are alive, and their reason is to help/hinder mans’ evolution. There is need for a challenge if one has to develop anything.
In other words, in my opinion, the liberation we speak of and seek to experience in yoga, spiritual transcendence, levity and freedom from the temporal world, from the strain and weight of our bodies, etc., is not about identification with the subject matter of these very beautiful notions, feelings, faith, belief, etc., but by the action in them, which is their object. This is the basic fundamental of raja. It is not about romance, what you believe, or the images you hold dear in your head or heart. In the end it’s what we do!
What we do is always, always based on how we think, feel, what we hold dear in our heads and hearts. These are the causes. This is what we really do ! So it is usless to bring in the argument about the higher stages of meditation, when one is not yet at that stage. What you say it is just like saying: there is no need to have a healthy diet, a healthy body, yama, or niyama, pranayama, asana, no need for all that, because those are just the first steps. Let’s jump to raja yoga, immediatly. Lets jump to jnana. But why, it would be better to become immediatly realized.
Ordering our thoughts, weeding them, weighting them, is how we advance in life. As part of yama and niyama, it’s practice never stops. I say, what I try to do, is just as good a raja practice than any other. Maybe with a pinch of karma and bhakti yoga here and there.
Peace brother,
Siva
Peace to you too.
